Cush Jumbo Lands Recurring ‘Good Wife’ Role Following Stellar New York Season

EXCLUSIVE: It’s an extraordinary time for Cush Jumbo, the London-based actress who starred on Broadway earlier this season with Hugh Jackman in Jez Butterworth’s spooky curiosity The River. She’s just concluded a sold-out, critically raved run of her solo show Josephine And I at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub and now is back in London to begin filming City Of Tiny Lights for director Pete Travis.

She won’t be gone long. I’m told she’s been tapped for a role on Robert King and Michelle King’s The Good Wife, beginning with next fall’s Season 7 opener of the Julianna Margulies-starring dramatic series, which films in New York for CBS. This will mark Jumbo’s American TV debut, though she’s already familiar to UK audiences playing opposite Brenda Blethyn in the ITV Studios detective series Vera. She also was seen on the big screen opposite Tom Sturridge in Remainder.

Details about the character aren’t available yet, but I’m told it’s a recurring role. Billing is still being worked out. The series has still not officially been renewed at the network, though it is expected to be.

Prior to The River, Jumbo starred in Mamma Mia!-director Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female, prison set production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in an acclaimed run at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse. Lloyd also directed Josephine and I, in which the actress interweaves the story of Josephine Baker with mostly autobiographical tales from her life as a biracial actress.